Irving always keeps a little resister radio by his bedside, and listens to the weather while I'm still sleeping. When I awake, he tells me what we can expect. And our morning is built around that. Today a relief from the 30C weather we've been having that has been sending us into the ravine for our daily hikes with Jackie and Jillie in the early morning rather than mid-afternoon. But though a bit cooler, humid and forecasted for showers in the morning, and rain in the afternoon.

We can handle showers; the forest canopy is quite efficient in light rain and little tends to penetrate below. So, off we went with Jackie and Jillie -- actually it's the reverse; they have us in tow. The air was cool and brisk, and the sky was silver-grey. We could feel the rain, smell the rain, imagine it was waiting for us to get good and deep into the ravine trails before deciding to come down.

As we entered the ravine, we looked as always at the perimeter growth of raspberry canes, thistles, thimbleberry shrubs and pilotweed. All thriving, all trying to outdo the other in territorial advantage. They've grown as tall as me this summer. Peering into the bramble, we could see to our surprise that thimbleberries (purple raspberries) were already ripening, although the flower-stage was still proliferating.

We've also noticed lately that poplars have begun to shed colourful foliage. We first noticed this propensity of poplars to drop leaves to the forest floor right in the middle of summer, years ago. Hypothesizing that when the forest is really dry this is how poplars react, though in other ways they're not nearly as sensitive to deleterious conditions as other trees. 

 Halfway through our circuit there are a few colonies of wild sunflowers. They're just beginning to send up floral stalks, and several of the plants are now carrying immature flower heads. Their leaves are quite huge, just as cultivated sunflowers have large leaves, and they stand, once again, about five feet in height. There are quite a few raspberry canes growing in that section as well. A few days earlier Irving was picking ripe berries for Jackie and Jillie.

Now, the Staghorn sumac have grown their summer candles, and they're almost at the peak of their fire-red colouration. We're noticing that the wild apple trees don't appear to have their usual good crop of emerging apples so it's likely this will turn out to be a sparse wild-apple harvest come late summer and early fall.   

We speculated, logically, that the lack of sunshine and threat of rain was keeping other people from the wider community off the forest trails today, but weren't complaining, since we enjoy having the trails to ourselves. For one thing, it keeps Jackie and Jillie quiet. Today is house-cleaning day, so once back home again and after breakfast that's what we turned our attention to.

Interminable dusting that takes forever. Irving did the vacuuming, assembled cardboard, plastic sheeting and bubble-wrap saved over from who knows where and how long ago, and made off for the auction house to pick up his bidding prize. By the time he arrived back home I was still cleaning, hadn't yet tackled washing the floors. But by the time I'm ready to wash the floors I figure the cleaning's just about done for another week.